M76, Little Dumbbell

[NGC 1502]

Last night in south Essex the rain cleared late evening. Clouds disappeared and with no moon the rain washed sky was about as transparent as it gets. The double cluster was visible with the unaided eye, that’s rare from my town location.

Lots of good deep-sky observations.  One of the objects was M76 Little Dumbbell. Some sources say it’s a difficult object but I have to disagree. Its location is close to obvious stars and at 44x with my 10” Dob it wasn’t hard to spot. Adding my UHC filter made it very obvious. Upping the power to 109x then 171x made the “bow tie” shape easy to see. Each end has its own NGC 650/651 designation. Therefore I’m saying it’s a relatively easy object.
 

If you want one of the more difficult Messier objects I’d pick galaxy M74. It’s easy to point your scope at because it’s close to Eta Pisces, but in spite of repeated tries from home I’ve been unsuccessful. However, many years ago while on holiday in the Peak District I had taken my 6” F4 travel Dob. The large faint glow of M76 was there, my one and only successful view.

Comments most welcome.

Ed.

[SwiMatt]

Nice observation and report!

I wonder if most difficult Messier objects become somewhat less difficult with 10 inches, but it might be my hidden aperture fever talking 😂 

At the bottom of this page https://starlust.org/messier-catalog/ there is a cool infographics that ranks Messiers by total brightness, surface brightness, and thus difficulty, and it suggests that M76 is a "moderate difficulty" object, in line with your experience. I should print this out and hang it on the wall

[josefk]

Hah. Both of these DSO were in a session for me at the very end of August. M76 successfully and M74 unsuccessfully. 

My skies were a measured 20.25 MPSAS but judging by the stars in UMi transparency was good to very good and M110 was a bit "easier" than usual. 

In these skies M76 was "easy" i.e immediately visible in the EP at the end of the star hop but even after spending some time on it i only observed it as an oval "ish" smudge or rounded rectangle. No bow tie or apple core effect on this viewing i'm afraid so i can't claim the two "independent" NGC. This was with 85mm of aperture, a 1mm exit pupil and UHC. I could see it at higher magnification and O-III but less well than at the 1mm exit pupil. I didn't try a larger exit pupil on this visit. I probably should have as i had a little bit of scale to play with - i could have lowered the magnification.

M74 on the other hand was a "no show" despite trying exit pupils between 5.8mm (skies way too grey) down to 1.5mm over nearly an hour of intense dark adapted waiting-looking-waiting (deep breathing, scope tapping, slow sweeping, etc...). I've seen M74 from this exact location and similar skies before in a larger 185mm scope (so i kind of know what to expect and know it's tricky to detect and shape or edge contrast). On this occasion i was consciously trying (unsuccessfully) to observe it after a star hop and in small gear. I think M74 will be my nemesis in an attempt to find all the Messier with 85mm or 95mm from Sth Lincs, at least it feels like the most difficult one i have observed so far using any scope in my location. 

Cheers

 

[NGC 1502]

1 hour ago, SwiMatt said:

Nice observation and report!

I wonder if most difficult Messier objects become somewhat less difficult with 10 inches, but it might be my hidden aperture fever talking 😂 

At the bottom of this page https://starlust.org/messier-catalog/ there is a cool infographics that ranks Messiers by total brightness, surface brightness, and thus difficulty, and it suggests that M76 is a "moderate difficulty" object, in line with your experience. I should print this out and hang it on the wall

Thanks for that link, never seen that one before😊